learning opportunities

Volunteering gives a lot of learning opportunities.

While being a volunteer in a foreign country, you learn (and practice) new languages. International environment can give you a great chance to improve your English skills of any level. Work with local community requires some knowledge of Romanian, which I have been trying to learn since the day I arrived in the country. However, independent learning is not enough and you can get provided with the language course, taught by professionals. Previous week we even had our very first classes. Moreover, constantly being around my Armenian teammate Arus enriched my everyday vocabulary with some words in Armenian.

Another thing you can learn during the volunteering period is practical skills. Here we work a lot on marketing and promotion, therefore enhancing our digital skills in different programs for creating visual content. Besides, we learned how to work with some heavy tools, in order to fix our youth center.

Volunteering is also full of flexibility and creativity. You can learn how to manage your time, how to create a schedule and adjust it in a few day, how to make a plan for your activities and adapt because something does not go according to the plan. You can learn how to dance, how to take pictures and videos, how to write blogs and many other things. Furthermore, you can learn how to teach others and how to learn while you are teaching.

Volunteering also means dealing with different kids of people. Everyone has their own desires, wishes, lifestyle, character and perception of the reality. You will need patience, empathy, solidarity, great investment of time and efforts, in order to achieve communication goals you set for yourself.

Volunteering gives an opportunity to learn how to deal with your own feelings and expectations. Sometimes you feel great and successful, sometimes you go through the wave of disappointment. You learn how to live with it and how to move on, trying to pursue important things.

Volunteering is experience.

Katsia

Escape

I’ve spent a huge part of my life living in the future. thinking about how it will be better once “this” moment is over.

And then it becomes “this” moment after “this” moment. it can always get better and I just keep living in the future. Hoping that one day I can be content.

I don’t know if this is a good or a bad thing. It just is.

I try what I could to find contentment in the present. But it doesn’t deny the fact that I still badly wanted the future to come.

My theory is that if you keep moving from one “future” to another “future”, eventually you come to a point in the future where it’s the version you want.

Well or at least until you fuck it up and things suck again and the cycle repeats.

Pandemic

There is still a pandemic going on….

I think sometimes people forget about that. but there is still a pandemic going on.

It has been almost 5 months (?) since the massive outbreak.

I remember starting 2020 in January very positive and optimistic and travelling.

and in less than a month, I had to go home because of the outbreak. and then I had to stay at home and temporarily cease all my plans.

fast forward to June, I’ve been spending most of my 2020 literally just being in my room.

it is now June and while I think the situation has eased a little in some countries, the total amount of cases in the world have been increasing rapidly.

and it is still increasing….

I feel like recent events have taken the focus away from the pandemic and there is this false illusion I get from some people that things are seemingly “back to normal”?? when the pandemic is still very much real and has not gotten any better.

so I thought I just wanted to make a post, Blog and write it down. that there is still a pandemic going on.

stay safe.

story behind the building

This week was almost completely dedicated to the workshop on storytelling, which was implemented online (unfortunately). This workshop is a part of the big European project “Stories behind city”, where participants from Novi Sad, Rijeka and Timisoara tell their personal stories about their cities via digital media tools.

The workshop was facilitated by experts in digital storytelling: Italian NGO Melting Pro and StoryCenter, which is based in Berkeley, USA. The outcome of 5 sessions we had was a video, where we tell our stories with support of visual and audio materials. I was really amazed by the final results from each member of our team.

This whole experience was interesting me, even though I cannot say that I learned something new for myself. However, it was an exciting challenge to go through the whole process and create a story that could be actually used in our work here. Hope you will enjoy it.

Katsia

Online happiness

Already two months, and suddenly I knew that we are going to have an online session. From the first moment, I just thought that it is a session, as in general everybody is having. I was wrong. It was a session as an Arrival training, where we were supposed to be with volunteers, who were also in România, but not in Timisoara. They all were from different sides of the world and for sure before the first meeting I had some fears.
Time for the first session. From our seven volunteers, I was with Alisa and Milica, I was happy that I am not alone and somehow there are people whos I know. Let’s say this was a little hope for me. Then the first session started and it was different from what I imagine before and what was happening there.
Sessions were cool, the trainers were amazing and I can’t describe my words about the group.
Every session we started by listening to jokes from Sorin ( one of the trainers ). And then we had group works in small groups. Groups where nobody knows what we need to do (LOL), where we were taking care of each other, and groups that made us recognize and make friends from different countries, even online.
I Will did not forget that in one whole session I and Alisa as because we were sitting together in the same room, we were laughing all the time. Yes, not for the session, but because of the warm environment, it makes us funny.
Let’s mention another happiness. We were supposed to work in a group . In each group three participants. And really non of us didn’t get the point of the experience, and lucky they just mixed and put us three: me, Alisa and Milica together, in the same group, and we didn’t do anything besides laughing, having fun, eating and speaking.
These days were amazing, I got really a lot of knowledge, even not connected with topics, but some knowledge and skills for using some apps. I got a lot of new friends, who were cool people, and of course, I had an opportunity to have one of the amazing trainers.
This was my short story, about the online sessions,during volunteering and quarantine …

Two days as a second

Online session … It looks boring … But no this was only from the beginning … After this sessions we passed about one month …. And Armando (from Spain ) who is volunteer in Oradea wrote me a massage that a group of volunteers are coming to Timisoara for a trip . I was pretty excited .Imagine new people , new faces, fun, friends and so on .

They came , ten people from Spain, Turkey , Portugal and we . From the first moments the environment was amazing , it looks that we know each other , started to speak from our volunteering , countries ,languages .It was amazing . Than we were hungry , decided to go to it Shaurma , we went , we stand line , waiting for the Shaurma ,and when it was our turn they told us ,«Finished ». We didn’t know should we laugh, or what. Than went to a restaurant .We sat , started eating , speaking. Somehow knew each other , what we like , what we don’t … It’s time to discover the city .

Decided to go to river , but without drinks this couldn’t happen it was time to look for drinks , because it was already dark , late stores were closed , but finally we found drinks . This was the easiest part. When we went to the river , there was a party, we could control our feelings and turn into the party we joined . Drinking , speaking , dancing , having fun . And at four o’clock arrived home. This is not all. Our journey we continued next day. They had free tour , and we joined them a little bit speak , and than boat , the feelings and fun was making us amazed and from the other side the hot weather was killing us …This didn’t interrupted us , we enjoyed …

They left ,but we promised to meet again . I was amazed how cool people they were …

You never know who will you meet next step , what will happen and what will you do . Just study to enjoy people and what is happening around you….

First half an hour

open doors for open minds

Yaaay, good news!
We almost completed the process of making our youth center shine. There are just some minor steps to finish it, like taking care of the garden and fixing the lights there.

While the virus is still somewhere around, we are preparing some games and informational materials for the followers of our page on Facebook. Besides, we are planning a lot of interesting activities in our youth center, which will be implemented as soon as the regulations will allow that.

We have been working a lot and I personally cannot wait to meet young people in our neighborhood, who are ready to get, share and exchange experience. We keep the doors open for everyone passing by, and hope that soon we will enjoy summertime with the local community in a fun and productive way (while respecting safety measures, of course).

Follow the updates!

Katsia

Coronavirus Letter To Humanity

The earth whispered but you did not hear.

The earth spoke but you did not listen

The earth screamed but you turned her off.

And so I was born…

I was not born to punish you..

I was born to awaken you..

The earth cried out for help…

Massive flooding. But you didn’t listen.

Burning fires. But you didn’t listen.

Strong hurricanes. But you didn’t listen.

Terrifying Tornadoes. But you didn’t listen.

You still don’t listen to the earth when

Ocean animals are dying due to pollutants in the waters.

Glaciers melting at an alarming rate.

Severe drought.

You didn’t listen to how much negativity the earth is receiving.

Non-stop wars.

Non-stop greed.

You just kept going on with your life..

No matter how much hate there was..

No matter how many killings daily..

It was more important to get that latest iPhone than worry about what the earth was trying to tell you..

But now I am here.

And I’ve made the world stop on its tracks.

I’ve made YOU finally listen.

I’ve made you take refuge.

I’ve made you stop thinking about materialistic things..

Now you are like the earth…

You are only worried about YOUR survival.

How does that feel?

I give you fever.. as the fires burn on earth.

I give you respiratory issues.. has pollution fill the earth air.

I give you weakness as the earth weakens every day.

I took away your comforts..Your outings.

The things you would use to forget about the planet and its pain.

And I made the world stop…

And now…

China has better air quality.. Skys are clear blue because factories are not spewing pollution unto the earth’s air.

The water in Venice is clean and dolphins are being seen. Because the gondola boats that pollute the water are not being used.

YOU are having to take time to reflect on what is important in your life.

Again I am not here to punish you.. I am here to Awaken you…

When all this is over and I am gone… Please remember these moments..

Listen to the earth.

Listen to your soul.

Stop Polluting the earth.

Stop Fighting among each other.

Stop caring about materialistic things.

And start loving your neighbors.

Start caring about the earth and all its creatures.

Start believing in a Creator.

Because next time I may come back even stronger….

Signed,Coronavirus

Surprises surprises

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The world has a weird way of always surprising you, be it with something bad or something good. Waiting patiently for the coffee places around Timisoara to open again, so I can go and enjoy some peace and quiet with a good cup of coffee, is the only thing that keeps me sane most of the days. Who would have told me that I would have found here in Timisoara really nice places to hang out and a month into being here everything would close down. But I digress. The point is that on 1st of June we will able to go around the city again and actually enjoy all the beautiful shops that Timisoara surprisingly has.

A thing that is not really surprising is that the floor in my youth center is still not ready. The day that it will be finished I will have a party to celebrate because it is needed after almost a year of waiting for it. Also I am really hopeful that the government will start letting us start having events on the youth centers because it is really cool to plan and everything but all those plans need to come into fruition.

That is all for this week. See you for the next one!

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